Hartford's budding mathematicians enjoy enrichment program

Nine-year-old Calvin Morgan-White of Hartford is exactly the kind of budding mathematician who might once have been overlooked in school.

But thanks to a curriculum developed by M. Katherine Gavin, an associate professor-in-residence at the Neag School of Education, bright kids like Calvin are learning advanced math concepts such as algebra, geometry, and probability – skills often thought to be well beyond their years.

In a school system where too many students still struggle to catch up in math, promising third- and fourth-graders at four Hartford elementary schools are surprising even their parents with skills learned in after-school math enrichment clubs operated by Gavin.

“I find it amazing. I think it’s a wonderful thing,” Calvin’s mother, Tamara Morgan, said at a recent family night math club meeting at Breakthrough Magnet School.

“It’s all [Calvin] would talk about,” she said. “He’d come home and do the work. He wasn’t assigned to do it. He was just doing it because it was fun.”

The clubs for gifted students started last spring at Breakthrough, Batchelder, Burr, and Noah Webster Schools with the help of a $150,000 grant from The Travelers Companies Inc. The company recently announced another $100,000 grant for the program.

“We have a special interest in supporting mathematics skills, as they relate directly to our business,” says Tara Spain, Travelers’ director of community relations.

The clubs are the outgrowth of a curriculum developed by a research team led by Gavin under a $3 million federal grant she received in 2002. Known as Project M³ (Mentoring Mathematical Minds), the curriculum produced significant achievement gains in field tests at schools in Connecticut and Kentucky.

Gavin, who is based at the Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, developed the project for children in grades three through five. Two years ago, her research team received another grant – $2.1 million from the National Science Foundation – for Project M² to create curricula for children from kindergarten through second grade.

Under Project M³, a key goal is to provide challenging mathematics to students who have traditionally not had this opportunity in their regular curriculum, “like the kids in Hartford,” says Gavin.